Shopping is an indispensable part of the ilgrimage. Religious tourists buy myriad range of merchandise at religious destinations for their survival, religious or social needs. A lot of shopping is by the virtue of traditions.
Retailers across the world have capitalized on the opportunities of marketing their merchandise to pilgrims using all the possible techniques since time immemorial. It is difficult to trace the definitive history of retailing at religious destinations, and we get some ideas through the old pieces of literature and religious treatises. We can say that even thousands of years ago, people used to shop for items for their survival at these religious places, and they also used to buy memorabilia, and many other products of religious significance for their relatives and friends. It was the part of their social obligations to bring and distribute the items of religious significance to the members of their family and society. The merchandise included various edibles, photographs, replicas, statues and so on.
The merchandise these religious tourists purchased to carry them back to their homes differed a lot according to their faiths, culture, distances and various demographic variables. Pilgrims shop religious items to adorn their homes and offices or to gift these items to their relatives & friends in future. Religious items can serve as visual reminders of spiritual beliefs as well as inspire people and give them comfort in times of trouble. With changing times, modes of transportations changed, new religious destinations emerged, social practices changed and so a lot of changes happened in the merchandise in demand, and the ways these merchandise were retailed.
In the modern era, when first time in the human history we have the facilities virtual pilgrimage and live telecast from religious centers, the enthusiasm among the worshippers and other types of tourists has not dampened at all, rather the number of people visiting the religious destinations and the frequency of visits are continuously increasing worldwide. The modern transportation infrastructure and related facilities facilitate the rapid movement of larger volume of merchandise of any size and features. To boot, the new means of promotion help in attracting the shoppers to the stores in larger number.
The retailing at pilgrim centers may not be sophisticated and high end as airport retailing, but the number of stores and volume of trade is much higher. The pilgrim retail is still largely unorganized, and we do not have many international retail chains catering the shoppers at these religious places. There are large number of small shops, and the retailing practices are still traditional.We rarely find salespeople in uniform talking in sophisticated language, and the use of plastic money is still limited. Although, some modernization is visible in a few high end hotels at these religious places, but these hotels cater to a very small proportion of religious tourists.
All these facts hint toward the huge opportunity of modernizing the retailing at pilgrim centers, which can result in better economies of scale, better merchandises, improved services and enhanced customer satisfaction. The modernization will be beneficial for all the stakeholders including retailers’ religious tourists and others. It may even help in increasing the number of tourists to these religious places, because it will bring the tourists hooked to modern retail practices in larger number and for longer durations.
Now, students have lot of options for a better career in marketing. They can pursue MBA in UAE. MBA Marketing opens up doors to a large number of career opportunities across the world. They can also opt for diploma in tourism from various universities like skyline to have promising career in tourism.
By: Umer Mehmood Dadu
In everyday life, a person does many things like managing home, family, work, shopping, saving pocket money, purchasing vegetables, managing social life, and many more. If one observes keenly, unknowingly, in all these activities, a person actually manages many things in the daily life. Activities like money management, saving, expenditure, things to purchase, giving priority to immediate activities, and postponing the unimportant things are all part of life. At the time of shopping or purchasing items, importance is given to the quality of product as well as its features. In summary, all these activities can simply be called as ‘Management.’ There is a perfect correlation between the management thoughts and theories proposed by famous management gurus in our lives.
F.Y.Taylor defines management as “the art of knowing what you want to do and then seeing that it is done in the best and cheapest way.” This definition is highly apt for our personal lives too.
To increase the efficiency in organizations, the management is used in a broader prospective. The main objective of all organizations is to earn profit and be responsible to the stakeholders. Similarly, in one’s personal life, we manage money, price, quantity, quality, budget to get a quality product for a low price. Organizations also manage money, plan for their budgets and expenditure, procure raw material economically, manage people, and manage the organizational processes to achieve targeted productivity. In all these management activities, various functions of management like Planning, Organizing, Directing, Controlling, Staffing, Leading and Motivating are involved. These activities belong to several departments like Marketing, Finance, HR, Business Strategy, Operations Management, IT and Systems among others. Management is a dynamic process and whether organizations or human beings, it is essential to adapt the management strategies to the ever changing external environment. Organizations and people do constantly interact with the external environment and change their management styles as per the requirement.
For example, due to the introduction of the VAT (Value Added Tax) in UAE, organizations have to immediately make lot of modifications to their cost structure, profit margins and competitive strategies to sustain the business. Similarly, the citizens of UAE also need to modify their daily lives and habits by looking at their spending patterns and tune them to VAT. In organizations, every activity or process are inter-related and mutually dependent on one another. For example, production depends on market demand, market demand depends on economy and spending habits of individuals, and customer behavior. Requirement of manpower depends on production capacity and in turn production capacity and manpower planning depends on the availability of budget. Thus, management process is a highly dynamic one.
Management can be compared with the clutch, accelerator, break and steering of a car which control the entire movement of the car. Similarly, in a personal life, individuals apply all these parts of a car to their lifestyle by using one or the other part, whenever and wherever it is required to manage according to the ever changing dynamics of external environment. Thus, all the human beings perform several management activities in their everyday life unknowingly.
Human beings can manage their personal lives by learning management skills, like organizations train their employees to learn the management skills. This requires a formal management education in some reputed Business School. Undergraduate and Post-graduate programmes like BBA and MBA programmes in various disciplines of management i.e., Marketing, Finance, HR, Operations, Business Strategy, International Business, Information Systems will develop these management skills with specific emphasis on these disciplines.
Satoshi Nakamoto is believed to have founded the first crypto currency Bitcoin, in the year 2004. No one knows the whereabouts of Mr. Satoshi so far. The reasons are clear. Now we find more than 1,000 crypto currencies in the world financial market although unregulated. When this article is being published, the Bitcoin was traded in the CEX 10 (Bitcoin exchange) for $ 6,000.
The most important feature of these crypto currencies is that the transactions are completed without intermediaries. No banking or non-banking financial institution is involved. All transactions are settled faster without any hindrances whatsoever. The parties to the transactions need not reveal their names and need not pay any transfer fees or transaction cost. These are the two reasons which have given rise to the discovery, evolution and growth of the crypt currencies.
The success of any business depends on the model or the mantras. The mantra followed Need and speed and the Blue Ocean technology: the need of the investors or businesses is to settle the transactions smarter and faster and this is found in crypto currencies including Bitcoin. There was no transfer of funds by without involving banks but crypto currencies there are no intermediaries for the transfer of funds. The names of the parties are not revealed. Crypto currencies have entered an unregulated market using cloud computing which has no competitors.
The ledger accounts of the investors and customers in these crypto currencies transactions are maintained by miners (accountants) by using high speed processing computers. These miners have a huge reward for solving a puzzle in every transaction of the Bit coin.
The Bitcoins are stored in Digital wallet, which can be found in cloud or on the users’ computers. This wallet is nothing but the bank account of the individuals who transact in the crypto currencies. The users of this Digital wallet can buy even a Pizza or anything using their public keys and private keys which are allotted to the users.
Small businesses generally prefer this system as no credit cards are required for the processing of the transactions.
The growth of Bitcoin from $ 1 to the $ 6,000 + or – is attributed to the Silk Road (on line black market) which needed a currency that could clear transactions without using banks. Even the closing of the borders of countries for legitimate business for various, has paved the way for business in these countries.
Calculation of the price of Bitcoin is done by CEX 10 (bit coin exchange) on the basis of the trade of the transactions. It has 100 million dollars market capitalization. Some of the international banks are trying to be a party of this block chain technology, which has a definite amount like the capital of the banks.
To invest one need not pay $ 6,000 dollars to buy one Bitcoin? You can buy even a fraction of that provided the country you live in, allows such transactions.
Future of Bitcoin: In spite of the unprecedented growth of the Bitcoin, it can’t be stated that, one should invest or transact though the Bitcoin as many governments have not supported it although some of them did support. The governments of various countries including the UAE, have not appreciated this technology as it might encourage illegal transfer of money for illegal activities
Investing in Bitcoin is like betting a T-20 Cricket International match. Anyone can win right? The theory of risk and rewards applies to this technology as much as it applies in the regulated markets.
Student Name: Moath Assad Srour
ID: 11088
Currency crises played a huge role in the economic disturbance of the interwar. Currency crisis is a type of financial crisis that occurs when there is decline in the value of a country's currency. This kind of decline in the currency impacts the economy severely and brings it to the downward trend and creates instability in the exchange rates. Due to this, the value of currency in the international market decreases drastically. One of the methods of minimizing the impact of currency crisis is by pooling adequate foreign reserves.
The world witnesses many instances of currency crisis till now. One of the recent crisis was during 1990s. The European Monetary System started experiencing a huge offloading of assets by the investors. The reason attributed to this was the disturbances in the exchange rate mechanism. Soon after this crisis followed the crisis in Asia and Mexico. It was thought that the crisis would spread to other parts of the world and would negatively impact their monetary systems. Researchers and Analysts generally do not provide any single acceptable reason as to why currency crisis would occur in some countries. Traditional models attribute currency crises to a deterioration of economic fundamentals. On the contrary, the recent models hypothesize that such crises may be as a result of the self-fulfilling prophecies or the shock effect that spreads over many countries. The different perspectives of the various models on what causes a currency crisis makes the study an interesting one and needs further investigation.
It is very important to understand currency crisis and develop mechanism to minimize its impact. One of the most important mechanism to minimize its impact is to analyze the degree of risk tolerance of investors. Past experience shows that before the financial crisis, most of the shareholders enjoyed several years of relatively good returns with little volatility. They became comfortable with the market's risk and reward proposition as long as it heavily favored rewards. As markets began to drop, many shareholders who thought they were comfortable with their risk tolerance, overestimated the risk and they left the market. Risk tolerance is unique to each shareholder. Some shareholders are more comfortable with market volatility than others.
The second strategy is to maintain a cash reserve. This strategy focuses on the need to balance both flexibility and discipline in responding to sudden events like currency crisis. This can be achieved by maintaining reasonable levels of cash reserves within an investor's overall investment and funding plans. The third strategy is to develop and inculcate good financial habits by the investor. It is important for the shareholders to realize several behavioral and environmental factors which can either assist or prevent the achievement of their targets. The shareholders should use the past lessons to build excellent financial habits which help in minimizing the stormy financial periods like currency crisis. The other strategies which can be used are Weigh Fundamentals versus Feelings and using the debt strategically.

Student’s Name: Shaikha Majid Alshamsi
Student’s ID No.: 12437
Every leader performs two roles in the organization, one is macro leadership role and the second one is micro leadership role. This article focuses on understanding the functions of a leader at macro and micro level and attempts to compare these two types of leaderships. Building a right environment and culture in the organization is an essential ingredient of macro leadership and analyzing and implementing the strategies on a day-to-day basis by monitoring every activity by doing an in-depth management is micro level leadership.
Macro is generally considered to be the ‘Big Picture’ of the leader and micro is considered to be the ‘task’ accomplishment of the leader.
At the macro level, the leader is more focused on bringing a transformational change in the organization by carefully monitoring the external and internal environment of it. The leader develops a long-term strategy by visualizing and anticipating the changes in the external environment and makes the structural changes required in the internal environment of the organization to synchronize the external changes.
Macro Leadership:
This leadership level or role is a strategic one. The leader thinks from a very broader perspective by scanning the business environment and suitably adapting the organization to the dynamics this external environment, keeping the vision, mission and objectives of the organization in mind.
The leader makes plans to expand the business by looking at various opportunities of investments. Keeps trying to innovate by launching new products, entering into new markets, making modifications to the existing products and services, and modifying the organizational strategies to deal with all the external stakeholders of the organization. Depending on the need, the leader also modifies the vision, mission and objectives of the organization from time to time. All the actions of the leader at this strategic level of leadership are oriented towards achieving sustainability of the organization. Therefore, at the macro leadership level, the leader plays a ‘transformational’ leader role.
Micro Leadership:
At this level of leadership, the leader tries to build the capacities of the organization in terms of manpower, finances, and other resources like machinery, equipment, and facilities. The leader also develops relationships with employee teams, lays out plans to complete the tasks, provides all the necessary support and motivation. The leader brings clarity to all the departments and functions by assigning them their roles and responsibilities in accomplishing the given tasks. All these actions match with the information gathered from the external environment at the macro leadership level.
The leader displays the necessary attitude by encouraging the employees to put their efforts to reach the goals for completing the tasks. The leader provides the required support to achieve the objectives of the organization.
Finally, for any leader to be a successful leader it is essential to display the leadership qualities at both the levels i.e., Macro and Micro.
Almost every marketing strategies revolve around 4Ps or 7Ps.It’s also been supposed that all Ps are usually controllable factors, were in PESTL (Political, Economical, Social, Technological, and Legal) are uncontrollable factors. It’s time to review on the academic scholarship, particularly in context to create awareness to the Marketers by providing insight to the analytical approach in distributor’s change over the decision.
It’s true that CMO on his immediate discretion can discontinues a product from
Any date he wishes merely with one circular to all stakeholders and shareholders of the company. Perhaps he also in tandem can do the same with the Price, Promotion, people, process and physical evidence too. But the decision to change place (i.e. Distribution) at once, perhaps is the daunting task.
Depending upon the industry, Intermediaries have a variety of titles/Names. Among popular names are C&F, Distributors, C&A, wholesalers, retailers, Propaganda, agents, etc. The titles also depend upon the ownership & job description and responsibility to be carried out by them. As their function demands they are responsible for indenting the good, receiving the good, inventory the goods, invoicing the goods, assorting them, sorting, repackaging, shipping the goods, ensuring the transportation, insurance, the goods to forward movement to the retailers for the ultimate destination for the consumer. In this process, they also promote the product and provide required services facility if needed for the product. At this point they display and facilitate the choices to be made by the purchaser which is typically important for new products. Feedback is also a very important function which they extend (Customer's feel, repurchase, compliments, and dissonance) that makes companies make required changes in other Ps to stay competitive & relevant for the customers.
As known that the flow of goods also carries revenue (the carrier of Profit). The delay the decision of discontinuation/substitution of distributors is great concern for CMO on the profitability of organizations. Since decision exacerbate while holding on present sales, substituting the demand and lead to issues which get put on hold leads to scrap the value of goods due to breakages, expiry, leakages, & spoilage unattended. Regular customers to the distributors take time to set to another route to purchase or show their resistance or get influenced to substitute the demand with competing products. Power of distributors they will take the issues to litigate where another hold on the decision can harm the sales and impact the progress of organizations.
What is advised? A distilled MOU is to be concocted, incorporating all possibilities of happenings which can impact business progress and process and secured the organization with clear acceptable norms where both the parties are at mutual welfare without hammering the work?
To reaffirm “Thinks before you act” Since an effective distribution channel are a source of strategic advantage for companies.
Article written by Ibrahim Abdelrahman Alkhayyal, MBA Student
Etisalat, headquartered in Abu Dhabi, is one of the largest corporations in the GCC. It provides all kinds of internet, mobile and Television packages. It has many firsts to its credit in GCC and in the world. It has the largest number of customers in UAE and provides widest coverage of 3G and 4G technologies. It also is the first corporation to 4G+LTE network. Moving ahead, it recently started focusing on 5G superfast networks. It tested the 5G through a trial and has been successful. The company claims it to be world’s fastest live trial of 5G. This technology is the next step in the high-speed mobile broadband services. The objective of 5G is provide customers with highly efficient, faster, cover more customers and cover more devices. At the same, it maintains the lowest levels of carbon footprint and causes absolutely no harm to the environmental aspects. Introduction of 5G will impact TV, Media, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Telecommunications, Transportation, Infrastructure and education sectors (Schools, Colleges and Universities) which will in turn impact all the other dependent sectors.
Etisalat recently completed deployment of 5G and conducted a live trial of its pre-commercial 5G mobile technology using millimeter wave operating over e-band through 2GHz of bandwidth and a massive MIMO (Multiple Input, Multiple Output) technology. The live trial reached the highest speed of 71 Gbps, a global record in the industry.
The 5G technology enables the concept of ‘global computing’. Through this the user can access the services from multi platforms from any location and at any time. It provides a great facility to customers to use application simultaneously in many platforms at a time with high speed. The 5G technology also aids in developing smart cities and enables digitization of all user services. It is expected that this technology is also going to develop the ‘Internet of Things’ at revolutionary speed. The utility services provided by the government and all the other private services are going to have a total transformation due to this technology. Etisalat is going to be the first corporation to initiate and implement the 5G network in UAE by 2020. The proposed investment on the required infrastructure and other supporting activities is expected to be around AED 3 Billion. This investment will be distributed across activities like upgradation of mobile network, installation of robotics technology and artificial intelligence.
Therefore, to conclude, in the next couple of years, UAE is going to witness a dramatic impact of 5G technology on all kinds of services offered to the citizens which can be customized as per their requirement. In future, it will be very interesting to watch not only customers interacting with each but also all the ‘things’ interacting with each other. 5G of Etisalat will become a way of life in UAE. In addition to all this, 5G will enable reduction of pollution and expenditure on usage of paper-based transaction and services by providing energy efficiency and ease and comfort. The 5G technology also benefits higher level, quality conscious technology and management educational institutions like Horizon University. The university can become completely a digital university and offer wide variety of programs in the areas of Information Technology and Management at BBA and MBA levels and also BS(IT) level. This technology also helps in offering diploma courses in various fields like tourism and travel.

Article Written by Eman Ali Ahli, MBA Student
The transition from the operational level to the strategic level is an important process that every leader needs to overcome. It involves many challenges. Many leaders face difficulty to pass this step and they fail to overcome it. Due to the rapid changes in the business environment and the growing competition and changing attitudes of employees from one generation to other generation, it is necessary for organizations to develop strategic leaders who are able to formulate and implement strategies which deliver the desired results to achieve sustainability. In contrast to operational leadership, whose role is limited to managing only the day-to-day operations, leaders who transform from operational leadership to strategic leadership need to play different types of roles to achieve long-term strategic results. This will help their organizations to grow and gain competitive advantage. It will also help them to implement the change management process easily and quickly. The importance of each role depends on the status of the business that the leader is associated with. The strategic leader generally plays nine roles in the organization while displaying his leadership style.
These nine roles of the top strategic leadership are:
1.Navigator— In this role, the leader works quickly and clearly to deal with difficulties, solves problems and takes advantage of various opportunities to influence existing work and people. The Navigator role of the leader makes the leader to analyze a large amount of conflicting information, understand the root cause of the problems and identify the feasible and optimal solutions.
2. Strategist— The strategist role of the leader enables the leader to develop a long-term strategy and set targets to match the vision of an organization. The strategy is focused on creation of future plans and required actions immediately. The strategist role enables the leader to provide a direction to the organization to achieve the desired vision.
3. Entrepreneur— In this role, the leader acts an entrepreneur. He/she identifies and takes advantage of opportunities and expands business by creating innovative products, services or markets. Thinking like an entrepreneur and owner of the organization, the leader generates new ideas, takes advantage of opportunities or proposals and transforms them into a new path. The leader develops the ability to solve problems easily through his acumen and shrewdness and creates a new style of leadership.
4. Mobilizer— Playing the role of mobilizer, the strategic leader mobilizes all kinds of resources and develops teams and partners to work with them by leveraging the synergy of wide variety of talent. Also, he / she builds a capacity that allows rapid implementation of work in order to achieve complex objectives.
5. Talent advocate - In this role, the strategic leader identifies talented and skillful employees, internally and externally and stays in touch with them to tap their talent as and when required. He / she creates a culture of talent development by encouraging innovative ideas, by providing training, by empowering the talented employees to reach their highest possible abilities.
6. Captivator— Playing the role of a captivator, the strategic leader continues to build confidence among employees, and creates positive feelings and a culture of belongingness. In this role, the leader converts the talent of employees into a useful outcome for the organization. Also, he convinces employees to accept his leadership style, synchronizes it with the vision of the organization and empowers them achieve the vision.
7. Global thinker— The other important role played by the strategic leader is as a global thinker. The leader understands and respects all types of diversity in the organization and designs the strategies and action keeping the diversity factor in mind. He thinks from a very high macro level perspective and keeps identifying global opportunities.
8. Change driver— Organizations need to adapt to the dynamic business environment by making changes on a continuous basis. The strategic leader plays an important role as a change driver. The leader creates and develops change management strategies and evolves techniques to make the employees accept the changes from time to time. The leader convinces the employees by projecting the fruitful outcomes of the changes.
9. Enterprise guardian - In this role, the strategic leader acts as an enterprise guardian. He / She keeps a constant check on the status of the organization by keenly observing the business environment and guards the enterprise from any disturbances. The leader refuses to negotiate over long-term gains. He / She takes bold and wise decisions with courage and risk taking attitude for a long-term benefit to the organization. The leader takes the onus of failure and shares the success with all the employees. Keeps away from emotions and personal relationships when it comes to the achievement of results. He / She becomes popular in the organization and outside by taking bold, useful but unpopular decisions. It is essential to develop the leaders with the above abilities in every organization. Management institutions like Horizon University, an accredited university in UAE offering MBA courses, BBA courses and diploma courses in Sharjah have a key role in inculcating such leadership traits right from the college days among the management students to enable them to grow and become strategic leaders in future.
It is the responsibility of the teacher to actively involve his or her students in the learning process. The most important thing he or she should do is to avoid giving clear, concise, organized lectures. If the presentation of a lesson is too easy to follow, most of the class will not need to learn the new material on their own.